How in the world can the nuclear industry get stronger with the disaster unfolding in Japan? The answer, unfortunately, is rather simple.
Americas favorite dish is boiled frog with a heaping side of denialist propaganda.
I wrote a diary at the beginning of the Gulf Oil crises, that I hoped the oil would catch the loop current, flow up the gulf stream, and end up washing on the shores of Britain. Of course I got slammed pretty hard for saying that, but those who slammed me missed the point. The point is, you have to hit Americans in the head with a big disaster hammer, and you have to do it over and over again, before they'll actually stop believing the propaganda and actually take action. Even the disaster in Japan won't be enough to wake people up.
Let's take a look at a worst case scenario in Japan.
Let's say every piece of radioactive material on the complex melts down into several big heaping globs of radioactive sludge. What happens then?
Radioactive particles will be carried into the atmosphere on steam and smoke from the material near and in contact with the sludge. But with the ocean breezes, there's a very good chance this material will blow out to the ocean. Although the sludge will remain radioactive for decades into the future, the material that will burn and carry radioactive particulates will dissipate fairly quickly, in a matter of a few weeks. They will then probably try to repeat what the Russians did and encase the material in a concrete tomb.
But will people be dropping dead in their tracks from radiation poisoning? Of course not! A small percentage of the Japanese population will develop cancers and other problems over the period of years and decades. But it will be slow and probably only effect several thousand people at most. If these people were to die tomorrow, the world would take notice and would take action. But because the process will be slow, our memories are so short, and the next financial collapse or Middle east revolution is right around the corner, the impact will fade quickly.
After the initial shock, which might last several months, the catastrophe in human lives will be in slow motion. In the mean time, the right wing propaganda machine, which is nothing more than an extension of the corporate Oligarch machine, will be shouting at the top of it's media lungs how almost no one was seriously injured by this disaster. The pseudoscience and denialism will be spread on the wings of the manipulated Tea baggers who give a cult like voice to the deliberate misinterpretation of the reality that just happened.
Drill baby drill, no global warming, no evolution, and now, no nuclear danger, will be added to the false information Tsunami that rides over the land with every new disaster, with every new revelation of how we are being misled, with every new megaphone purchased by the Koch brothers and their elite minions.
In the BP oil spill, we needed the frog to fry, not just get hot. Now we are almost back to as if nothing had happened. In Japan, the frog will boil, many Japanese families will face many personal crises for years into the future. We released the nuclear genie, we need to put it back in the bottle. We don't have the megaphones of the Oligarchs, but our voices can still be heard. We can be heard in the media that is still open (NYtimes, NPR, PBS, local newspapers, ...), we can be heard at the ballot box (never stay home again), and we can be heard on the streets (GO Wisconsin!)! But if we remain silent, just like the Oil Industry won the battle of the Gulf, the Nuclear industry will win the battle of Japan.
We are truly engaged in an information war, and we are losing. Silence is a losing strategy that will result in enormous pain and suffering for millions and billions of people throughout this planet. The nuclear disaster in Japan will last for years, we must not forget, and more importantly, we must not let our country and the world forget.